Op-Ed: Kenny Rocker: Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern merger doesn’t kill competition. It unlocks it.
Since Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern announced our proposed merger, critics have argued that combining the two railroads would reduce competition, limit shipper options, and drive up costs.
It is a familiar argument, one we hear around any ambitious merger. There’s just one problem – it’s wrong. And we don’t have to argue about theories surrounding rail mergers, because we just lived through it.
When the Surface Transportation Board approved the Canadian Pacific–Kansas City Southern merger in 2023, the North American freight landscape changed overnight. A single-line railroad suddenly connected Canada, the United States, and Mexico through a seamless network. The result was not less competition. It was more.
The CPKC merger didn’t just make CPKC better. Union Pacific stepped up to compete and delivered real benefits for our customers.
Days after the STB approved the CPKC merger, Union Pacific and Grupo México increased service at Eagle Pass on the Mexico-Texas border. We haven’t let up since. In 2025, we launched international crews with Grupo México, further improving capacity and fluidity at the gateway. Since 2023, Union Pacific’s gateway volume with Mexico is up over 5%.
Customers won in other ways as well. CPKC immediately became a strong competitor and Union Pacific had to fight to compete with them. In full transparency, we lost business. One example was Schneider National, a strategically important account that decided to shift their Mexico business away from us to CPKC after the merger.
Union Pacific responded by adjusting its pricing to compete with CPKC’s single-line service, delivering more competitive value to customers. That is what healthy competition looks like.
Competition pushed us, and the customer came out ahead. That’s not a theory. That’s history, in fact very recent history.
Now our industry finds itself at another inflection point. The proposed merger with Norfolk Southern will create the first transcontinental railroad in U.S. history: a single-line network from the Pacific to the Atlantic, under one operating plan, eliminating interchanges that today add 24 to 48 hours and real cost to supply chains.
At the heart of our application are seven new premium intermodal trains running seven days a week, connecting western origins to eastern markets, and six new manifest trains that will create faster, more reliable, lower-cost options for traffic moving to, from, and across the watershed region – the middle of the country where today’s divided rail networks meet and too often, freight sits awaiting interchange-related handoffs from one rail company to another.
Just like the CPKC merger, these enhancements would create more competitive options for shippers while strengthening the efficiency of the broader freight network.
Perhaps the strongest evidence that this merger would increase competition is what happened immediately after it was announced. The instant a stronger Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern combination was proposed, new lanes and new services appeared from competitors.
That reaction should surprise no one. When one company develops a better product, competitors are forced to improve their own. They invest in new services, sharpen pricing, and seek ways to win business. That dynamic ultimately benefits customers and strengthens the marketplace.
That competition isn’t limited to other railroads. We intend to compete hard for truckload-to-rail conversions, and we intend to keep competing every day for the freight our customers trust us with now. Our application says it plainly: we are going after market share from trucks, from other railroads, from anyone who has grown comfortable. When we compete hard for our customers’ business, they win. Better service and sharper pricing don’t happen because competitors ask nicely. They happen because the marketplace demands it.
The opposition isn’t evidence this merger will harm competition. It’s the clearest proof yet that competition is alive and accelerating. This increased competition is welcome. The plan is to keep leading it.
The Surface Transportation Board recently accepted our merger application and will soon undertake a thorough review of the proposal. That process is important and necessary.
As we move into the next phase of regulatory review, Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern will keep investing in the network, in the service products, and in the people who earned this business in the first place. That is how we plan to beat the competition.
Kenny Rocker is Executive Vice President of Marketing and Sales at Union Pacific. A role he has held with the company since August of 2018.
